I hope you are well again. I missed a sunrise shoot too -just was too tired because I walked so much in NY - Ijust hate to travel with the subway - as convenient it maybe.

I totally agree with your lines about public art projects. Mostartwork does have its climax appeal when they´re keptsimple - at least to me - and this is my opinion. Its difficultto explain for an artist how his artwork should be "read" - that´s impossible to achieve for everybody but I think itworked with you and maybe with me.

I will add my Gates pictures on my website soon - you´reinvited to have a look at it. I´ll notify you on this threadwhen.

I haven´t been to the Conn. hills - I´m from Germany and that´sa little far away. But at my home in the rural there are plentyof so called moraine (from the ice age) rocks lying around - com-pletely covered by moss and lichens. Very beautiful. But manmade walls appear there too - they were WWII bunkers. I avoid walking tooclose - you never know what is inside.

So it was interesting to read your lines about the influence of manon the natural surroundings. The forest seems to be man-plantedtoo - too regular.

russell, I knew I didn't like it, but couldn't say why. I think you did it. Maybe the critics think this is Christo's weakest effort because they are starting to get a bit tired of the same stunt again.

I have to disagree with katemann. I don't think I have to call it art.

Andreas,Thanks for jumping in. I tried to get down to NYC for a sunrise shoot. The Gates gods would not have it. My schedule, weather, and illness kept me away.

In general, I’m a strong supporter of one time “public art projects.” I think The Gates was a good one. Beautiful and simple. The pathways of the park and the parade of Gates complement each other. There’s very little man can add to improve on natural surroundings. But of course Central Park is not natural. And that’s why it works.

Many pooh-pooh these things, especially if any public funding is involved. The Gates was privately funded.

I live in the northwest hills of Connecticut. Rural and very New England. For as long as I can remember I’ve been enchanted by “found” stonewalls in the middle 100 year old forests. The Erie Canal and the rail road ended large scale farming in New England and the place was mostly abandoned after the Civil War (1865). But the archeology remains. Strangely, lichen covered and smeared by heaving frost, they don’t look out of place. I think old stonewalls are one of the few instances when the hand of man adds interest and a fair bit of poignancy to otherwise natural surroundings.

I'll weigh in with the opinion that "Crackers" is more creative than "The Gates". "Crackers" is a commentary on the essential triviality of a manufactured "event". That Christo's work was Artifice posing as Art was essentially the conclusion of several practicing art critics, among them Ed Sozanski, the art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Crackers" expresses a point of view, while "The Gates" was essentially content-free and, characterized as it was by the formal device of unmodulated repetition, visually boring. Whatever one thinks of Christo's oeuvre, "The Gates" is easily his weakest effort to date. By all accounts, his original vision was beat into the ground by all the rules imposed for liability's sake. Whatever grace and elan his design might have had at the outset was trumped by the bureaucratic apparatus. One would think that Christo would be savvy to that by now. If, and I believe this, part of Christo's "Art" is the "performance" of engaging governmental elements to gain approval for his installation visions, he lost this one badly. Does anyone need kitchen curtains?